Mary Poppins is one of the relatively newer musicals on at the West End opening in December 2004 so discounts tickets have been very hard to come by, therefore the Get Into London Theatre promotion was happily received by me and I jumped at the chance to go.

Mary Poppins has been on my to do list for quite some time so I was really looking forward to seeing the production – and I wasn’t disappointed. Of course Julie Andrews and Dick Van Dyke are an extremely hard act to follow – but I think that the actress and actor playing their roles (sorry – names escape me) pulled it off fairly well.

The songs and the acting were on par with what I expected and the movie trademark songs (Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious, A Spoonful of Sugar, Chim Chim Cher-ee, Let’s Go Fly A Kite) were toe tappingly infectious. There were also some new songs including Practically Perfect (to introduce Mary to the children.) The choreography was pretty good – but the impact was probably less for me as I was sitting off to the side a bit – and one stand out scene involved Bert walking up one wall, across the ceiling and then down the other wall. There were also some moments of magic with Mary pulling out a tree, lamp, and full length mirror from her bag.

What I enjoyed most was the set – it was in a word – brilliant. Somehow the designers were able to fit a two story house (17 Cherry Tree Lane) plus the roof on to the stage – with floors moving up and down as required. In addition to Cherry Tree Lan they were able to take us to the park, to the markets, and to the bank. Brilliant engineering.

Overall, Mary Poppins is a fairly enjoyable musical and, although Lion King still rates as my favourite, Mary Poppins definitely rates up there.